In fairness, that is very surprising.

So for the analogy, it really is like Costco didn't make any attempt to check they were buying actual iPhones.

"Someone else" sounds correct but else isn't trying to act as a conjunction there.

I mean, still perhaps not. But it's not quite as ridiculous as your analogy makes it sound.

It is very clear for many children that allowing them to gorge themselves on TV (or whatever) will not result in them self regulating.

With a second it's practically impossible. We'd need extra childcare (and more floorspace where we live!) to trap him in a different room while the first is watching TV. Taking TV away from the first would be very hard (you're right that it's hard to withdraw once it's routine) but also not something I'd want anyway.

I'm not convinced that it necessarily expands out once it has a foothold. We have a pretty well defined TV time (before dinner) and it's easy to say "yes you can watch that show ... when it's next TV time".

> The point is not that every explanation will be understood, but to at least demonstrate that there is a reason for preventing fun things, even if it's complex and confusing.

If I tell my 3 year old that watching too much TV will affect her concentration, I absolutely don't expect her to make a complex long-term value judgement, or even to know what the word "concentration" means. I also don't expect her to just say "oh fair enough then". As I said, it's just to demonstrate that there is a reason (even if she doesn't understand it) beyond my own satisfaction.

Can you really not see that there are three possibilities here:

1. "I don't care if you're upset, so that's what we're doing".

2. "I don't want you to be upset, and although there's a good reason, if I can't persuade you logically then you can have it your way"

3. "I don't want you to be upset, but there's a good reason, so that's what we're doing"

(Edit: Having written that, the last one is still not quite right. The point is to acknowledge why that have that feeling - not just assert that they're upset. Usually it's pretty simple e.g. they want to carry on playing. But it does take more effort than either of the other approaches.)

> I sometimes see parents ...

In my experience (from casual observation), the very worst behaved children have uncaring parents that shout and scream at them.

The reality of dirty clothes getting her bed dirty comes from physics, not me.

Edit: As another example, I might impose the end of TV time but still give a brief reason of it not being good for your concentration to watch too much. The point is not that every explanation will be understood, but to at least demonstrate that there is a reason for preventing fun things, even if it's complex and confusing - it's not me just enjoying her being upset.

This didn't result in her refusing and a big fight. She agreed and changed her top without any physical force.

As she did, she was still crying, but with hugs from me. Instead of me being the adversary imposing the rules, she got to have emotional support through what was, for her, a hard time.

She will not grow up to be an emotionally fragile adult, upset every time she needs to change her top. (At least, not because of that interaction.) That's giving your actions too much credit! She will learn for herself that it's not important. But she'll grow up feeling supported.

(Honestly, it probably wouldn't have been that bad if I had let wear it to bed! But I'm sure you wouldn't prefer that level of pandering.)

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Edit:

Piggybacking my comment to add: a great book on this subject is "How To Talk So That Kids Will Listen" and, for younger children, "How To Talk So Little Kids Will Listen". An approach it advocates is:

1. Clearly sympathising with the child's emotion (as several of my replies say, this takes a lot more effort than just saying "I see that you're sad, oh dear").

2. Saying "The problem is ...". Not "but"! Like adults, children know that nothing before "but" means anything.

3. Give a brief reason why you're going to do something different. To repeat what I said in several comments, the goal is not to persuade them (although, of course, it's great if it does), just to demonstrate that there is a reason.

4. Follow through with the action regardless.

I have since seen my daughter saying to other children (or her animals during imaginary play) "the problem is..." :-)

It does have some great other tips e.g. using a visual timer to illustrate when there's some amount of time to complete an activity.

Typically with your pattern, you'd use a switch statement on the event type, but what do you do if it's in the user-defined space (type>=EVENT_USER_START)? You could add mandatory function pointers for relevant handlers in a header prefix, but now you're just reimplementing virtual methods. As is common in C, you end up making your own object-oriented language, only with more effort and not as good.